Play Gardens at The Mulberry Bush School

Our work with the Mulberry Bush was to create a unique and completely bespoke play area for each of the five residential houses on the site. Each play area was created around a different theme, named after the houses themselves; Sunset, Pegasus, Jigsaw, Rainbow and a new build property.

The design process

Each play space has its own story and personality, with the broad overview being as follows:

Jigsaw has a lighthouse that offers views onto the Rainbow Garden playground, which itself, follows a boat theme. The top of the tower is fully enclosed and offers views in all directions. To the side there's a climbing wall and ground-floor tower den. We've made use of existing slides that were recovered and refurbished when we dismantled the old play.

The Sailing ship in the Rainbow garden is a double-level play space that encourages imaginative play and interaction between the two adjacent gardens. Underneath, there's a secret hideout den, and again a top deck lookout.

A castle-style fort is at the heart of the Sunset garden and it's been made super multi-use. A swing, football goals and basketball net have been fitted below the walkway and are integrated in to the fort's archways, with another secret den below.

Within the Pegasus garden there's a giant bird box-style play den with a stick maze constructed from natural chestnut timber poles and a number of different obstacles set within the trail. These include balance beams, stepping stones and wobble boards!

For the new build, we created a treehouse getaway to complement the garden. In reality, it's a raised covered tree deck accessed by a spiral staircase, set amongst the trees on the Eastern edge of the garden. The treehouse creates multi-functional space that could be used with tables and chairs, beds or even hammocks and could also act as an outdoor learning and activities room when needed.

We created a video when the project was completed that gives you a brief flying overview.

Background

The Mulberry Bush School is set in the peaceful tranquility of the Oxfordshire countryside. The school is almost unique in what it does, in that it takes children of primary school age who arrive from environments of family breakdown, high anxiety and trauma. Their work is about long-term change and to achieve this takes time, rather than any quick fix or miracle cures. They take children on a three-year residential programme which runs for 38 weeks. Their aim is to get the children back into the mainstream community. So whilst they make huge progress against the educational curriculum, they also aim to make huge progress on social integration too.

Here's a short video about their work.